wildflower | cth

6.1 - control

"Hey Lia?" Emily asked as she stood in the door opening of my room. I looked up from my book and she was looking at me, a confused look and her phone in her hands. "Did you talk about our rules with Sam? Because I just got a text from Calum Hood to ask if we could talk. You're good friends with Sam and Sam is dating Ashton, so I figured it might have gone that way?" She asked and I stared at her, unable to say I told Calum about it.

"Sam asked about it when we were at the beach, I thought she knew but apparently she forgot part of the story. Maybe one of the guys overheard us?" I lied but she just looked down at her phone, the screen still unlocked and the text probably still open. "Is everything okay?"

"Our houses haven't spoken in 25 years and now all of a sudden Calum wants to sit down and talk, I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. They currently have 10 legacies there and one of them might be my half brother. I never thought I would know anything about my dad but what if he comes clean? What if I'll finally know who did it?" She asked and she was shaken up, not by the text but by the possibilities of the conversation.

"Would you want to know?" I asked her and she shrugged her shoulders. She walked in further and closed the door behind her before sitting down on the chair beside me.

"If it was you, would you want to know?" She asked back and I looked down at my hands shortly before looking back up.

"I think it would depend on if I want someone new in my life or not. If my dad wasn't my biological father, I think I'd want to know who it is. But I would want that because my parents were so absent all my life. As a child, I imagined my dad to be a pilot and my mom a superhero. So I'd wave at every plane thinking it was my dad and I'd watch the news to see if my mom saved the world. I loved the parents I made up more than the ones I had." I explained her, "If you know and he rejects you, it will hurt like hell because then he's a real person near you that doesn't want you in his life, instead of an imaginary person. If you don't know, you might keep questioning but you've been fine for 24 years and you have your amazing mom." I looked at her but she looked so confused and scared, "No option is ideal, even if he accepts you, and you won't know if you wanted to know or not until after you do."

"I want someone to be responsible for what they did to my mom but I don't know if I want him as my father. And I can't get just one of the two."

"You could always try to get DNA samples from all the legacies and just figure out who your brother is. Then you can still decide if you want to get to know him or not." I said with a shrug but she laughed at it, thinking I was joking.

"How would we even do that?" She asked when she realised I was serious.

"Sam invited me to a party at Calum's house, I was gonna say no because of the rule but I could go and try to collect as many red cups as possible of them?" I suggested and she looked ahead of her, thinking about the possibility.

"Could you break the rule and ask Calum? Ask him if he knows who it was? If he does know, you get to decide if it's someone I want to know or not."

"Wouldn't you want to decide that yourself?"

"If he's a shit dad to his son, I don't want to know. If he is a good man, I'll decide."

"Okay." I said with a soft smile and she turned to me before hugging me.

"Thank you. Just make sure you don't leave your drink alone at the party. You never know." She said softly when she looked at me again. "I never really thought I'd find out."

"Try not to have too much hope, it might not be who you hope it is."

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